"When vets seek therapy, they want a professional who can relate to soldiers in combat, and that usually means a therapist who has military experience. Without such empathy, therapy often is doomed, vets say.

Because most psychologists and mental health care professionals don't have a military background, there's a void in the safety net for vets. Some veterans' organizations have stepped up, training members to help their peers, and the Soldiers Project provides free counseling from licensed professionals and veterans by phone to newly returned vets."

Once again the VA is trying to place a small band-aid on a major problem. These veterans oftentimes have life-threatening mental illnesses that require a therapeutic relationship that involves true understanding as to what the veteran went through in their wartime service.

It's a disgrace that the VA is allowed to get away with treating America's veterans like this.

Every veteran who sits before a VA psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker should ask if they know anything about the military. If the therapist doesn't know, then the veteran should go to the Patient Advocate and ask to transfer care to a therapist with a military background.

This is the thinking that led to the development of the VetCenter program for Vietnam vets back in the 70's. It turned out to be an invalid perspective then and remains invalid today.

You don't have to have been in combat to treat combat veterans. You just have to know what you're doing as psychologist. The real issue is that few psychologists are adequately trained in trauma psychology regardless of the nature or context of the traumatic event.

They routinely, and fatally, fall prey to the identification of the veteran-as-victim. Once the therapist makes that mistake, she may as well go to lunch, for her usefulness is ended.

As a former VA psychologist, I will tell you that vets do not sit BEFORE a VA psychiatrist. They sit on a chair facing the treatment team, as the psychiatrist asks sidelong questions while inputting data into the computer. The system is run by the system.

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